144 IN BIRD LAND. 
fervor and real passion in the vocal efforts of the 
tawny musician. 
A little farther on, I again turned my steps into 
a dense section of the woods. Suddenly there was 
a twinkle of wings, a flash of olive-green, a sharp 
Chip, and then there before me, a few rods away, 
a little bird went hopping about on the ground, 
picking up dainties from the brown leaves. What 
could it be? Was I about to find a species that 
was new to me? It really seemed so. My opera- 
glass, when levelled upon the bird, revealed olive- 
green upper parts, yellow or buff under parts, and 
four black stripes on the head, two on the pileum 
and one through each eye. It was the rare worm- 
eating warbler (Hedmitherus vermivorus) at last, —a 
bird that had for many years eluded me. The little 
charmer was quite wary, chirping nervously while I 
ogled him, — for it was a male, — and then hopped up 
into a sapling, and finally scurried away out of sight. 
A few steps farther on in the woods an extremely 
fine cat-like call swung down, like thread of sound, 
from the tree-tops.* Of ‘course, it was my ‘tmiy 
acquaintance the blue-gray gnat-catcher, and his 
pretty spouse, who had arrived, perhaps from Cuba 
or Guatemala, a few days before. What an immense 
distance for their frail little wings to traverse, 
“through tracts and provinces of sky”! You 
seldom see anything more dainty and dream-like 
than the fluttering of these birds from one tree-top 
to another, reminding you of an animated cloudlet 
hovering and darting about in mid-air. Not a more 
